Author and Inspired Writer

After my last post, my dear older and much wiser sister Chris posted a comment that advised us to get a great deal of topsoil spread over our yard before we seeded.  This is excellent advice, born from hard experience, which should produce very good results for anyone who follows it.  Unfortunately, I did not see the comment until after we’d seeded the lawn last Friday.

This is just one of the many things we’ve done wrong when it came to repairing the yard, and yes, I did finally convince The Mister to go for it ourselves and not call in the pros.  We should have levelled the yard; we should have aerated the ground; we should have brought in a truckload of earth to seed in, then fertilized it, then covered it with mulch; we should have used a fancy-schmancy spreader thingy and not a cheap handheld jobby.  Oh yes, gentle readers, we should have done many, many things, but when your backup plan for lawn repair is to pave it over and paint it green, you tend to make it up as you go along.

Once the trench had been reduced to ground level and raked, I asked The Mister to go purchase some ten bags or so of topsoil.  He disappeared and then returned with ten bags of what he told me was topsoil which he kindly laid out for me by the trench since I would be taking the early shift the next day.  When I got out there just after sunup, armed with all manner of garden implements, I noticed the bags were not topsoil, but organic compost.  Uh-huh.  What to do?

I could wait until the store opened and get the stuff I wanted, but that would take at least an hour and a half and it was already getting uncomfortably warm.  So…what the hey!  I sliced open the bags, dumped them on the trench and went to town raking it in.  The compost actually looked beautiful – rich black soil that made you believe anything could grow in it.  And it was on sale for half-price!  Yowza!  That was good enough for me.  So later that day, I sent His Nibs down to get more of the same, and the next day more of the same, and the next day still more of the same.

By Friday, the yard was not looking too bad.  In fact, our neighbours kept stopping by and complimenting us on it.  Mind you, the yard had been looking so dreadful for so long, they may have been relieved to see any improvement going on.  But we were encouraged none-the-less, and I told The Mister it was time to finish up.

“After supper tonight, we’re putting on the seed.”

“All right, Missus, then I’ll give ‘er a good watering.”

Apparently, our lawn is female.

Anyway, that evening, The Mister walked up and down the trench and the divots (deep ruts left by the burly plumber folks’ machinery) and seeded everything with the little handheld spreader.  Then he turned on the sprinkler – oh yeah, that was a new purchase for us.  We have NEVER watered the grass, not in 24 years of marriage.  In fact, we have never given the grass a thought beyond having it mowed now and then, so all this fuss was a pretty big deal for us.  And the neighbours too, I suspect.

The Mister very kindly said he would look after the watering, twice a day, but a few times God saved him the trouble, like last night and this morning, which was nice.

For some reason, I cannot pass the front door without checking out “the front forty” as we call it, and day before yesterday, just four days after the planting, lo and behold, I thought I saw little green shoots poking out of the trench here and there.  I ran and got my glasses, looked again and then threw my hands in the air and let go with a great, “Thank you, Jesus!”  (It’s not blasphemy if it’s sincere.  Which it was.)  The Mister came running and couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Does this mean it worked?” he asked.

We planted “fall-plant seed”, actually “late fall-plant seed,” but no one expected the kind of temperatures we’ve had in the last few days.  Two days with the mercury over 95 degrees, the seed must have been thinking, “Where’d they plant us, Tahiti?”  This is my theory for the early germination, and now the trench is completely covered in new sprouts and the divots are coming along.

As far as I’m concerned, it worked.  In spite of everything, it worked great.

Ah yes, the lawn.  This is turning out to be a bigger project than we’d anticipated.

As you no doubt recall, gentle readers, the plan originally called for the replacement of a piece of pipe that lay buried directly in front of our front door.  But when the burly plumber folk left our premises, the entire pipe had been replaced extending all the way out to the road.  We weren’t upset about this – a wee bit surprised, perhaps – but it seemed well worth the additional expense knowing this pipe ain’t gonna have to get dug up again for a millenium.

How-some-ever, it is a basic law of physics that the earth one tries to replace from an excavation such as ours is always well in excess of the amount dug up in the first place.  Meaning?

Meaning the eight-foot deep trench across our lawn ended up being about three feet high.

“No problemo!” the chief plumber said to The Mister.  “What you do is get yourself a length of copper pipe.”

“Copper pipe.  Check!” says The Mister.

“Then attach it to the end of the hose.”

“Check!”

“Then stick it into this impressive pile of dirt and turn on the water.”

“Check!”

“After a half hour or so, move it to another place and repeat.”

“Check!”

“And that way the pile will reduce from the bottom up and,” the chief plumber continued with a twinkle, “you won’t have to write me another…”

“Cheque!” The Mister replied triumphantly.

Male humour.

Nobody thought it would work.  Not The Mister.  Not our neighbours.  Just me.  After all, plumbers are good people.  Why would they lie about something like that, knowing the stink we would likely raise if it didn’t work.

But work it did.  The Mister would ‘water the trench’ and after it started to collapse, I would rake in the sides.  Within about two weeks, we had reduced the height by about two-thirds.

But then things got a little more difficult.

The ground in Essex County is clay, and when clay gets wet and dries out, it turns hard…very, very hard.  About all that was left to rake at this point was large clumps of rock hard clay, and no tool in our lawn care arsenal could touch them.

“Pa,” I said, after futiley hacking away at one of these beasts, “try spraying ’em and see if that softens ’em up any.”  It did, but only temporarily.  The next day, they had hardened back up and lay there laughing at us.

“What we need here, Missus, is a darn good rain.”

From his lips to God’s ear.

The next day it rained.  It poured!  It came down in buckets, bathtubs even!  Our eavestroughs overflowed it came down so hard and so fast.  And it kept raining (though not at that force) for a day and a half.  By the time it was over, the trench was decimated.  Even better, the clay clumps were smashed.  It looked for all the world as if God looked down on us and said, “Aw, you guys have been working so hard on this.  I’ll take it from here.”  And whoosh!  It was so.

Mind you, the yard still looks pretty awful.  And there is an ongoing discussion between The Mister and I about what to do next.  The Mister is leaning toward calling in professionals to restore the yard.  I think we can do it ourselves.  I told him to take some time to think it over and in the meantime I’ll continue working on it in the hopes that I can show him we don’t need no pros.

Wish me luck and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Ahoy, gentle readers!  Been too long since last we chatted, but Yours-Ever-Faithfully has been busy…doing housework!  Yes, you read that right – housework!  Has it come to this? you ask.  Verily, it has.

As you know, a week and a half ago, the burly plumbers left our domicile, and although we were soooo pleased to have them come and do the much needed repairs, we were even more pleased to see them depart.  Only, they left behind a strong reminder of their work – dust!  The basement was covered in it.  I could feel it on every surface I touched, and I could taste it whenever anything was disturbed.  And while I didn’t suffer a major allergy attack, the little beggars were starting to trouble me.  I refrained from doing my workout, (all my equipment is in the basement) because I was actually afraid to take a deep breath.

“Paw,” I said, “it’s time.”

“Right you are there, Missus.”  He nodded his head and kept nodding as he asked, “Time for what exactly?”

“Time to clean the basement.”

“Right you are.  So I imagine you’d like to do that sometime soon?”

“Sometime now.”

“Right you are.”

“But I’m not going down there without a dust mask with a fresh filter in it.  So if you wouldn’t mind scurrying off to Canadian Tire and purchasing same, I’d appreciate it.”

“Be delighted!” he replied, and scurry off he did.

Now, I sent him out for filters only.  We already have dust masks that would have worked fine, just the filters were old and needed replacing.  But I should have known sending a man to Canadian Tire is like sending me to Dollarama – shopping lists become irrelevant as soon as we step through the door.

“That’s a big box you got there, Mister,” I said when he returned.  “A mighty big box.”

“Right you are, Missus.  You won’t believe what I bought ya.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Have a look-see.”  And he held the box out to me.

I pulled the box out of the bag and tears sprang to my eyes.  I exclaimed, “Oh Paw!  Is it true?  After twenty-four years of married bliss, did you actually go and buy me…A RESPIRATOR???!!!”

He beamed.

“Well, I know how the dust gets to you, and I know how sometimes paint fumes do the same.  So here’s something that’ll help with both. And it was on sale for half-price, don’tcha know?  Well, g’ahead, g’ahead, try it on, Missus!”

That took some doing, but when we finally got me strapped in I bore a strong resemblance to Robocop, and sounded not unlike Darth Vader.

“Luke,” I intoned, “I’m your fathaaah!”

The Mister giggled.

“We should get that movie out again,” he suggested.

“Yeah, after we clean the basement.”

Then off we trudged downstairs to get the basement next to godliness.  My new mask was so effective I could not detect any smells at all – not the even the soap, which was Murphy’s and has a strong citronella smell.  But I didn’t smell nothin’!

“That being the case,” The Mister said, looking out of the corner of his eye, “then perhaps this would be the best time to…let one go, as they say?”

“Don’t you even think about it!” I countered.  “There isn’t any respirator invented that could protect me from those noxious fumes!”

The basement is almost completely restored.  I still need to wash off my weights and the shelf where I keep some plants, and then Boom!  Done! The other project we’re working on is restoring our poor wounded front lawn.

More on that next time.

Let’s see…

When we last left our plumbing heroes they had just constructed an impressively deep trench that neatly bisected our front yard.  Whenever any of them jumped into said trench, they completely disappeared from view until they popped out again, like a rabbit from a den.  A rabbit in a hard hat.  A rabbit in a hard hat, work boots, and a manly-manly expression on its face.  (Better not press that metaphor too much further.)

Just before lunch, one of the crew poked his head in the door and reported that he was just about to sever the sewer line so, “Please don’t run any water, OK?”

“OK,” I sez, but oh! gentle reader, in that moment I was assailed by a near impossible to resist temptation to flush the toilet, run to the front door, and scream, “Get out of the trench!  GET OUT OF THE TREEEEENCH!!!”

But I resisted.

They have just left our domicile after cleaning up…well, their version of cleaning up which is nowhere near my version of cleaning up…and our home is returning to its peaceful attitude once more.  We are so pleased the work is done and at a most reasonable price.  They even removed some tree stumps free of charge and gave us a substantial discount for getting both the inside and outside jobs done at the same time.

All in all, a pleasant experience as these things go.  And a lesson not to put things off.